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Comment by ziotom78 | Hacker News Reader

Let's hope that «multi-monitor support» will help this bug [1] go away! I have found that most of the Windows apps I used to rely on have good counterparts working on Linux, but sadly nothing matches Powerpoint (no, LibreOffice does not count).

[1] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7416

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What exactly makes PowerPoint so good? I’ve never really used either, I’ve mostly relied on pamdoc’s Beamer generator and google slides.

Its easy to generate complex vector graphics as well as presentations. Orders of magnitude increase in productivity compared with Latex or Beamer. This might not be felt in the coding community, as their diagrams are standardized and hence simple .

I have used it to create icons, posters, product screenshots and what not. It's really versatile.

Libreoffice Present is pretty buggy. For example, sometimes clicks don't do the right thing. Also, I've had slide elements become uneditable. These bugs are really noticeable when making presentations with complex slides. Libreoffice also produced really poor kerning, poor antialising and figure quality after resizing (though perhaps this has improved since my last try).

Beamer and google slides are fine when you want bullet points or a figure. My scientific work produces lots of pictures and graphs - figure placement and labelling is really important. Animations are also sometimes necessary. Beamer, google slides and libreoffice just don't work well there.

> Libreoffice Present

It is called LibreOffice Impress.

I try to avoid using MS products (not hate, just trying to favour free software), but I had to learn extensively about Office last year and I really enjoyed the UX. It has some powerful features for working with animations, transitions and effects. Take this example [1] -I don’t think it’s even possible to do in Google Slides, which finds its power by being more simple and multiplatform. So it depends on your needs, which also applies to Beamer.

[1]: https://youtu.be/3wtwVE5injI

The other issue is that even if you had an office application with feature parity to Powerpoint, Powerpoint is still the one that everyone else is using. As a result, perfect file compatibility is more important than features. I haven't used Open/LIbreOffice in about two years - I stopped because I could not collaborate with colleagues on the same PPT file if I was using LibreOffice. Little things in format and layout would get messed up when you went back and forth.

Onlyoffice is getting there, but it is still missing a few features, such as animations.

beamer slides?

Fingers crossed!

I love Google Slides, it allows me to get make slides without aditional complications, I do prefer simpler slides, and to be honest I kind of dislike it when people have animations that take literal seconds! The way I see it, slides are an aid, they're there just to help me stay on track and to guide me. That does NOT mean that you should read of of it... Sorry, it's just so many people get presenting SO wrong... It angered me so much that when I was in University I decided to make a presentation about making presentations, in hopes that maybe the students would learn a thing or two and make start making better presentation.

tl;dr; Google Slides is web-based, thus it works everywhere

Pretty sure Office is available as web app[0]
[0]: https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for-the...

LibreOffice is able to create presentations in PDF format, and that's all anyone needs from presentations.

I love LibreOffice and rely only on it. But its Impress part is really cumbersome to use compared to PowerPoint (and I hate to admit that).
All the icons are lined up front and hard to distinguish; some bugs are really annoying (animated transitions don't work on my computers); some functionalities are tough to find : grouping/ungrouping for example.
If only I had time, I'd work to fix that...

You don't need animated transitions in presentations. This eye-candy is fun the first time you see it, but later it's just an irritating delay.
UI preferences are a matter of taste and habits. I find PowerPoint ui a hot garbage mess where I can't find anything, and LibreOffice is logical and structured to me. So my mileage obviously varies.

Replying “you don’t need the feature” to “the feature is clearly bugged” doesn’t make much sense.
Anyways, presentations are supposed to grab attention. Nothing grabs attention better than an animation.

If a feature is unnecessary, it does not matter if it is buggy.
As a person who regularly reviews students presentations, I tell you this: these "grabbing attention" gimmicks achieve nothing but irritate the audience. If you rely on it, you better think again, how to grab attention with your presentation contents.
Don't believe me? Ok. Check any of the presentations that had successfully pitched projects to VCs. None of them will contain any "attention grabbing" animations. Example: [1]
[1] https://medium.com/@gc/the-beginning-of-uber-7fb17e544851

Of course "I" don't need it. But you see, there’s this kid of mine. In his school, you’re somehow pushed to use PowerPoint (see Microsoft schools programme)... So he’s confronted with his friends who totally abuse the visuals (and the teacher somehow likes that too). So social pressure comes in. And although the kid could use LibreOffice, he’s so dissappointed to not be able to play in the same league as his friend that I have hard times convincing him to stay out of MSFT. So no, I don’t need animated transitions but he does (and don’t start me on the fact I could explain him why transitions are a distraction, usually).

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